Art in the streets

The Palo Alto Festival of the Arts was a great way to spend a Saturday: enjoying the sun, strolling down the middle of University Avenue, looking at the work of talented artists, and indulging in the sort of food you only eat at street fairs.

Fried artichoke hearts with mayonnaise, fried calamari, kettle corn, skewers of grilled meat. (Where else could you walk around chomping on a stick of teriyaki chicken without feeling self-conscious?)
















One block was set aside for Italian street painting, and a vivid patchwork of ephemeral art emerged.




































The City from Grizzly Peak, by Tom Killion

I took home this wonderful woodcut print and its mate; together the pair gives a panoramic view of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Bay. The artist, Tom Killion, draws on the techniques of early 19th century Japanese ukiyo-ë landscape masters as well as those of early 20th century American and European wood-engraving and book illustration.

Working from his own sketches made on site, Killion carves the images onto blocks made of cherry, linoleum or other materials, using Japanese hand tools. Sometimes a different block is made for each color. Other times, a block is printed with a light color; then parts are carved away and another color is used, overprinting the first.

I enjoyed talking with Killion at his festival booth and looking at his samples demonstrating the complex process by which the layers of color are added to the print. It's wonderful to have a piece of art in your home that you enjoy looking at every day, and it's even more meaningful to have met the artist and listened to him or her describe the creative process.

My new toy

This was my gift to myself from the Exploratorium.

It's Constructibles, a set of 25 slotted cardboard shapes to build with.

Want a set of your own? Get one through the Exploratorium Store here (and browse through the other cool stuff they have to play with).

Or go to the manufacturer's site, Mudpuppy, for more pattern options.

Please touch the exhibits

One of the best things to do in San Francisco, whether you're a child or not, is to visit the Exploratorium. It is the most interesting science museum I've ever seen, perhaps because it subverts the traditional idea of a museum. It's more like a playground combined with an art studio and a workshop where you're allowed to use all the tools. Nothing says "don't touch."

To quote the Exploratorium's Web site, the place is "a collage of hundreds of interactive exhibits in the areas of science, art, and human perception."

You can watch a museum staffer dissect a cow's eye or fertilize sea-urchin eggs. Or draw a picture using a fixed marker pen and a three-foot square pad of paper on a pendulum tray.

Once the boys and I were fascinated by a time-lapse movie showing how the body of a dead bird decays. On this visit, we were spent a lot of time peering under the hood of a car and learning how mechanics diagnose mechanical problems by their sounds.

This playspace invited us to "stack the stars" and figure out how to best arrange them so that there was hardly any space in between. The best part, according to C, was the "tunnels" between the structure and the floor. I had to take his word on that, not being small enough to wriggle through.

(If anyone knows what this shape is called, please comment! I forgot the term. It looks like this stellated dodecahedron.)



The box of magnetic black sand always draws a crowd. It feels almost like stroking a smooth furry animal.













The "Mind" portion of the museum explores how we think and feel. Stand in the middle of a bullseye and look up as directed, and you'll see that a grand piano is hoisted directly overhead, hanging by a single cable. How do you feel about this? Maybe you don't care. Or maybe you feel a little strange, like a target, even though your rational mind knows that you're perfectly safe.

I love watching people approach this exhibit's unusual water fountain. It works as you'd expect, but the water spout is attached to a toilet. The display assures you that this is a brand-new fixture, never used for its apparent purpose. Will you drink from it? (I make a point of doing so whenever I walk by, and every time it requires a tiny bit of mental effort.)

Since you're going to be here for a long visit, it's good to know that you can have a tasty meal or snack. If a young companion demands PB&J or pizza, you can get those. But I enjoyed spicy roasted chicken served with wild rice pilaf and an organic mixed greens salad with a wonderful shiitake-mushroom vinaigrette. And a Haagen-Dazs ice-cream chaser.

High wire

I don't watch many documentaries, and I don't usually write movie reviews, but "Man on Wire" is compelling, and no one whom I've talked with recently seems to know about it.

On August 7, 1974, a man walked a tightrope strung surreptitiously between the towers of New York's World Trade Center. Philippe Petit, a French funambulist, magician and street performer, became entranced by the towers as a teenager and spent years planning the ultimate guerrilla performance art.

The movie does a brilliant job of laying out all the details in the manner of a thriller or a heist film. It shouldn't be suspenseful: we know how it ends. The 50-something Petit gleefully narrates throughout the film. But the viewer is caught up, in the same way that Petit's comrades must have been, by the details of "le coup" and the sheer outrageousness of it all.

As the plan gets more and more complicated, you become convinced that all involved are fools. A co-conspirator baldly admits that he got high the night before the event, that he smoked pot "every day for 35 years, so why should that day have been any different?"

Then one by one, Petit's friends describe how they realized, at different times, that their grand adventure could also be considered assisted suicide. Only one person dropped out because of his misgivings.

I wondered how director James Marsh would present the wire-walking itself, as there is no film footage of Petit on the wire, only still photography. But the photos are unforgettable.

In one picture taken just before the walk, Petit's eyes are huge and his face is like stone. He looks completely terrified.

Halfway across, Petit realizes that the wire is sound and that the thing can actually be done, that he might live through it. A friend of Petit who assisted with the rigging chokes up on the screen as he recalls this moment, when Petit's face lit up, "and we knew he would be all right."

Then there is another photo of Petit on the wire, grinning with what looks like sheer delight. It's the most moving part of the film.

Reality does intrude on the fairy tale; you can't keep it at bay. Several times I resisted the urge to nudge my young companions and whisper: I was there, I walked down that concourse once, I stood on that observation deck, and all of it is gone.

There was a horrid moment at the start of the film where suddenly I was looking at a pit full of rubble. I felt betrayed. I'd read that the movie didn't refer to the destruction of the towers at all, so what was this??

After a second or two, I saw that the footage was obviously old, that what we were viewing was construction, not devastation. Shots of the towers as they rose were paired with pictures of Petit as a child, climbing things and doing magic tricks.

Everyone who witnessed the sky walk seems to run out of words trying to describe it. Even the police sergeant being interviewed for television about Petit's arrest is a fascinating study. He appears to be trying to speak soberly and according to procedure, but he just can't do it. With a deadpan expression, he refers to the "tightrope dancer... because what he was doing, you just couldn't call it walking."

As Petit was put into a police car, to be hauled off for booking and a psychiatric review, reporters shoved microphones into the open window, demanding, "Why did you do it?" Petit found the question amusing, and "very American." "There is no `why,'" he said, chuckling.

At some point during the movie, I stopped asking "Why?" and just appreciated the passion of the man, crazy or not.